Rest vs. Rust: A deep dive into coaches’ approach to QB play in pre-season

At the start of his eighth year as a quarterback in the CFL, Mike Reilly has run the preseason gamut.

In the early years of his career in BC, he wanted every rep he could get.

“Travis (Lulay) always joked with me that I was the best preseason player in the history of the CFL,” Reilly said after an intense Eskimos’ practice on Wednesday.

“I think I had a ton of touchdowns, little to no picks and a bunch of yards and then I’d sit on the bench for 18 games. Early on I wanted it for the exposure and the experience. You can’t get better unless you play,” he said.

He arrived in Edmonton in 2013 and assumed starter duties, but still felt like he needed his preseason time.

“It was my first time trying to take over as a franchise player so I needed to play a lot to get chemistry built with my guys,” he explained. “I always wondered when I was younger, ‘It’d be nice to get to that point where you don’t have to play in preseason games.’”

Which brings us to the present stage of his career. Reilly won’t see the field for more than a quarter and a half in Sunday’s preseason home date against Calgary, according to his head coach, Jason Maas. His reps were similar last year when Maas and his staff were brand-new in Edmonton and Reilly saw minimal action in the preseason in 2014 and 2015 under Chris Jones as well. You won’t see Reilly put up much of a fight on that front anymore.

“To me, when you have a coaching staff that you trust — and I don’t think I could trust this coaching staff more than I do right now — just because I know how much work they put in, their preparation, I leave it in their hands to judge what they think is necessary for me to play,” Reilly said.

As preseason Week A rolls out, quarterback management is always a tricky issue. It’s safer to rest your starters in the preseason, but coaches also have to weigh the value of getting their most important offensive player into the game and to at least let them shed the rust that a long offseason provides.

Steve Daniel, the CFL’s statistician, took a deep look at how last year’s starters were used in the preseason and determined that No. 1 quarterbacks led 68 out of 298 drives through 10 preseason games (23 per cent).

RELATED: PRE-SEASON QB TRACKER: MONITORING GAME TIME UNDER CENTRE

In years past, starters generally have gotten a third of preseason possessions.

“I don’t want to use them a lot and I don’t want to play my starters (in general) a ton either,” Maas said.

“You have to get them in enough to be ready to play in games. You’ve got defensive guys that are starters. They haven’t gotten to finish (a hit) on a quarterback yet this year and we’re all about getting to the quarterback, so it’s hard not to play those guys.

“Offensively, Mike isn’t going to get more than a quarter and a half, if he plays that long, depending on how the series go. You don’t want to put him in harm’s way, but at the same time they do need to get work.”

Maas will balance Reilly’s light in-game usage with a heavy training camp.

“The one thing we’ve done is given our starters a lot of reps. Our guys have gotten more reps than everybody else. We haven’t made it equal,” he said.

“We’ve made it with the mindset of our guys who are behind our starters right now will be playing a lot in the second preseason game, for sure. Then most likely the second half of (Sunday’s) Calgary game.

“I’m looking at playing our starters as much as we can in the first half and then after that they probably won’t play the rest of the preseason, to be honest, or the majority of them won’t.”

In the first preseason game on the schedule, Bo Levi Mitchell sat out on Tuesday for Calgary’s win over the Lions, while BC starter Jon Jennings was in long enough to make 3-8 passes for 28 yards.

In Toronto, Ricky Ray made all three of his passes for 26 yards in the Argos’ win over Montreal, while the Als were cautious with Darian Durant and sat him out after he injured his knee last week. Ray’s veteran status factor into his limited reps, as does his injury history. He missed half of the Argos games last year, and played just three games in 2015.

Ottawa QB Trevor Harris is in Reilly’s 2013 cleats this year. He made 12-15 passes for a game-high 145 yards on Thursday night in the REDBLACKS’ win over Hamilton. Zach Collaros, coming back from an injury last season, sat out.

Here’s a sampling of what Daniel’s research showed on QB preseason usage:

• Starts made by No. 1 QBs in the pre-season: 16 of 20 (80%). But the essential point is that these No. 1 starters stayed in the game for only a brief time: an average of the first four drives only and then went to the bench for the rest of the game.

• Example #1 – Bo Levi Mitchell: One drive only in 2016’s first pre-season game; zero drives in Tuesday night’s game and did not even dress.

• Example #2 – Mike Reilly: Started Week 1 game in 2016 and stayed in for two drives. In their second game, Reilly played only three possessions. Note: Reilly was the 2015 Grey Cup-winning QB but played only half of 2015 season so the Esks were being careful.

• Example #3 – Ricky Ray: Started two drives only in Week 1 and none at all in Week 2. The first game of the 2016 regular season? Toronto played VERY poorly but Ray himself was not the problem (26/36 72 per cent, 282 yards, 2 TDs, 1 interception that came in the second half).

• Example #4 – Kevin Glenn: Pretty much the standard treatment. The first four drives in Week 1, first six drives in Week 2 to get ready for the regular season, where he threw for 332 yards and a TD in the winning opener.

• Example #5 – Jonathon Jennings: BC was VERY careful as he had done enough in 2015 to prove that he was the No. 1 and Lulay the No. 2. Jennings started only Game 2 and played just nine of BC’s 27 drives (he played the full 1st half of Game 2). On Tuesday, he led only three drives vs Calgary.

• Example #6 – Drew Willy: Started both pre-season games in 2016 for Winnipeg. He played three drives in the first game, then seven in the second game. Had a decent first game vs Montreal, losing 22-14.